Four years ago, a record number of Americans voted. This year, the total may be lower.

One reason is reported diminished enthusiasm. Another could be the effort by Republicans in many
states to make voting harder.

Voting ought to be the life blood of democracy. In the United States, it’s become another issue
that divides the parties.

Democrats have mostly sought to facilitate voting — same-day registration, longer early
registration, simpler procedures. In 1993, a Democratic Congress and administration passed the “
motor-voter” law requiring states to allow registration when residents applied for driver’s
licenses.

By contrast, most trying to tighten voting laws are Republicans. Their stated motive is to
reduce voter fraud, though investigations, including one by the Bush administration’s Justice
Department, uncovered only scattered illegality.

Whatever the motive, the practical impact could be to reduce voting among groups that generally
vote Democratic. It’s nothing new. A 2004 report by Rice University professor Chandler Davidson and
three associates for the Center for Voting Rights and Protection, after noting Southern Democrats
once suppressed black voting, detailed decades of GOP “ballot security” programs aimed at
discouraging black voters. In 1993, Republican consultant Ed Rollins conceded an effort to suppress
black turnout in the New Jersey governor’s race.

These efforts accelerated after Republicans won many governorships and legislatures in 2010.
President Barack Obama’s Justice Department is challenging several efforts under the 1965 Voting
Rights Act and the 1993 law.

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law says 18 states have
implemented restrictions that fall most heavily on “young, minority and low-income voters, as well
as voters with disabilities.” Fifteen of them have Republican governors.

A federal court in Washington is to consider next month the Texas law requiring voters to have a
specified official identification: a driver’s license, passport, concealed handgun permit or
military permit. Student IDs aren’t valid.

The Justice Department blocked enforcement, declaring the law could disenfranchise hundreds of
thousands of Hispanics. Texas responded by challenging the Voting Rights Act’s legality.

This week, the
Houston Chronicle reported that efforts to purge Texas non-voters had resulted in the
erroneous suspension of thousands of eligible voters.

In Florida last week, a federal judge blocked officials from enforcing a new law designed to
restrict voter-registration drives by requiring groups such as the League of Women Voters to submit
completed registration applications within 48 hours.

The law “imposes burdensome record-keeping and reporting requirements that serve little if any
purpose,” Judge Robert Hinkle said.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department advised Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner that state
efforts to identify noncitizens with driver’s licenses and send the names to county voter officials
to purge them from the rolls appear to violate the 1993 law’s provision preventing changes in voter
rolls within 90 days of a federal election.

It also noted these procedures in five counties violate provisions in the Voting Rights Act that
require approval by the Justice Department or a federal court.

Florida officials said they would continue the effort, which has mainly targeted Hispanics for
removal from the rolls.

On the surface, requiring a driver’s license or other state-issued ID seems reasonable. But
thousands of Americans don’t have them, mainly the elderly, minorities and the poor, and getting
them is often a hassle.

Current Florida efforts are hardly without precedent. The Brennan Center’s Myrna Perez likened
them to the 2000 Florida campaign purging voters with criminal convictions that “led to, by
conservative estimates, close to 12,000 eligible voters being targeted for removal.”

For those who have forgotten, 537 votes decided the 2000 outcome in Florida and, with it, the
presidency.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News.